Keyword Planning

Keyword Placements & Keyword Density

When writing a web site it is best to get as many of the keywords that you want to rank on in your page. Having keywords on your web site will increase your keyword density. The term Keyword Density is used to describe the percentage of how many times a keyword appears on a page in relation to the rest of the page. Keyword Placements are an important part in ranking in the Search Engines on particular keywords. It is best to make best use of HTML tags for Search Engine rankings. Of course the Title and the Meta Tags help rankings of keywords but so does the positioning of text (keyword placements) all throughout a web page.

Domain, Folder & File Names – The domain name is the most important place to have keyword placements and a good keyword density. For example, if you want to rank on “domain names” then http://www.domain-names.com (or .net, .org etc) would be the best you could get as it would be 100% keyword density. File names of images and html/php/asp files should good for keyword placements. I should note however that you should folders deep.

Try keeping all files in http://www.domain.com/page.html instead of http://www.domain.com/folder/page.html. As you go down through folders the search engines are most likely to think that they are less valuable pages that the ones in the root folder of the domain.

In terms of domain names, where possible always go for the .com extension rather that a .net or .org for example (if possible take all three!). People always assume that a website will end in a .com and even if this has been noted it may be detrimental to your busines website. I heard a story once where someone did some advertising on the back of buses listing a web site and even though the text was large and you could clearly see that the website ended in a .org they found that the .com website (which was not there website) had a major increase in visitors because of their advertising and not much of these potential visitors got to see the website that was really being advertised.

The best possible outcome in terms of domain names is to purchase the .com .net and .org (use the .com and set diversions to the main web site on the other two). Next best to this is to purchase the .com only and lastly the .net or .org.

Title – The title is the most important keyword placement area to include the main keywords you want to rank on and describe your web site. It’s best to keep Titles between 3-7 words and keep them as relevant as possible.

Meta Tags – Apart from the title, it is important to get keywords placed in the description tag as not only is this seen in the web searches but this also helps with search engine rankings for specific keywords that you place in the description tag. Next to description, you should also insert the main keywords into the keywords Meta Tag. Not too many keywords should be put in the keyword Meta Tag and keywords should only be put into the keyword Meta tag if they’re found on the web page itself.

Headings (H1 and H2) – Headings are the next most important keyword placement are to include keywords. Headings should obviously not be too long but should include valuable keywords to increase your web site keyword density. These tags will be more valuable than the keywords being in the plain text content.

Text Content – It is best to have keywords at the start of the body text content and also all the way through the content. Do not be excessive on how much you use keywords on a web page. It is recommended not to exceed a keyword density of 10%.

Alt Tags – Alt tags (alternate text) should be used on all images. This is the best way of describing what a picture is. Images shouldn’t be used excessively but when they’re used they will be recognized better by the Search Engines if they include alt tags. Alt tags should also be used to be a keyword placement area.